Our Origins

abrasiveMedia (our parent nonprofit) was founded in 2004 to help artists grow, connect, and produce. Selah Harvey, age 12 (pictured above) is the son of two of the founders of the organization. From an early age, he decided he was superpowered and recruited everyone he talked to (friends, family, grocery store clerks, etc.) to join the Super Squad, a team of heroes. He had an elaborate system of tracking everyone's ranks and powers; there is no official roster outside his mighty brain, but we estimate that at its height he had recruited over 300 people.

When he was in the 5th grade, he came to his parents one day and said, "You say you want to help all sorts of artists. Well, I'm creative, so how can I be a part of abrasiveMedia?" After a family staff meeting, it was decided that Selah would become a junior arts advocate, and he was given freedom to submit projects for residency. And that's when he had his bright idea: "We should make the Super Squad for real!"

Selah has big visions for the Super Squad. Eventually, it will include a kids-only moderated online community for supers to interact safely, and it will partner with abrasiveMedia's school outreach program, Project Awake, to offer mentoring opportunities for older students. We're helping him begin with the Super Squad Experiences... interdisciplinary pop-up camps to take Selah's vision to kids all over Nashville. He believes (and we do, too) that heroes are everywhere, and when we all work together, we can make our world a beautiful place.